Fermenting Hefeweizen

I am fermenting my first Hefeweizen to pour Easter Sunday. I read that the yeast I am using has a very active fermentation, WLP380. Yep, it is active. 24 hours after pitching it (last night), my lock was bubbling like crazy. I woke up at 1:30am to use the bathroom and I could hear a whistling sound. I went to check out the fermenter and it was starting to get plugged. I don't really have a regular blowoff tube, but I was able to fashion one using a siphon hose that fit into the same hole as my bubbler fermentation lock (5/16" hose). I put the other end in a bucket of water. It worked great overnight. The next morning I noticed the temperature was way up, 78 degrees while room temp was below 68 degrees. I put a wet t-shirt over the carboy and put a fan on it. The temp came down to 74 degrees, but I am having a tough time getting it lower. I then went to work, when I came home for lunch, the rubber stopper and my skinny hose had blown off. The top of the carboy was exposed for at most 4 hours and smelled like bananas. I sanitized the stopper and hose and re-attached it. Really hoping I don’t get banana bread, but I am worried about the temp fluctuation and the open fermenter. Also have a nice little mess to clean up when I get home. Even got the cat who sleeps nearby.

I hope you like bananas

The open fermenter will not be a problem as there is a lot of CO2 pushing out.

The temps though are high and you definitely want to bring them down below 70.

Fermenting hefeweizens will generally produce more banana notes at high temps and more clove at low temps, ideally you shoot for balance but I prefer mine on the low end for clove. The problem now is the really active fermentation occurred at higher than normal temps so you could be stuck with excessive banana notes. That's not to say that with time it won't mellow.

I would keep it in the primary for 4 weeks at as cool a temp as you can-swamp cooler with ice bottles if you can, hopefully the yeast will clean things up, then bottle/keg and condition for a couple more weeks

Don't toss it! Be patient and it will probably turn out okay.

Next time try some fermcap-s in the boil and it'll help with the blow out, I got tired of having to rig a blow off all the time and it's worked great!

Thanks for the feedback. Ugh, I am not a big fan of banana. I am going to try a few ideas to get the temp down under 70 degrees if its still high when I get home. It's been less than 48hours since we pitched, so hopefully there is still a lot of activity to come that will help clean up the taste. I'll be sure to Tebow each evening until it's time to keg.

A lot of people will get water bottles frozen up and place the primary in a tub of cold water with the ice bottles and rotate them daily, from a lot of posts it's seems to work very well, I would still leave it in the primary for the 4 weeks and let the yeast do its job.

It sounds like fermentation temps may be an issue for you in general as summer approaches so you might want to consider something more permanent as most ales are fermented between 60-68F. Food for thought

I built a chest freezer to convert into a fermenter, but then I went on a spending spree and turned it into a 4 faucet keezer instead. Now as long as I have beer on tap, I can't raise the temperature to 60+ degrees to use as a fermenter. My keezer is only 7.2cuft. so there isn't enough room for a separate chamber. Eventually when I recover from the cost of my keezer build-out, I'll probably seek out another cheap freezer to use strictly for fermenting. Trying to control the temperature in a San Diego house built in 1939 (no AC, raised foundation) would be a 24hour a day challenge in the summer.

Bradbrewer said:

I built a chest freezer to convert into a fermenter, but then I went on a spending spree and turned it into a 4 faucet keezer instead. Now as long as I have beer on tap, I can't raise the temperature to 60+ degrees to use as a fermenter. My keezer is only 7.2cuft. so there isn't enough room for a separate chamber. Eventually when I recover from the cost of my keezer build-out, I'll probably seek out another cheap freezer to use strictly for fermenting. Trying to control the temperature in a San Diego house built in 1939 (no AC, raised foundation) would be a 24hour a day challenge in the summer.

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Hehe, I have the same issue with the keezer/fermentation chamber. Hopefully I can convince SWMBO that I now need a larger keezer in our new house ;-)

A rubbermaid tote filled with water will bring your fermenting temps down to within a couple degrees of the water temp. Takes a lot more heat from the fermentation to heat up the beer, and 20 gallons of water too. Temp swings happen much slower, and a 500ml bottle of ice a couple times a day will keep even a volcanic hefe in check.

It's more important to keep these temps under control from the time you pitch yeast, than it is to control the temps after the bulk of primary fermentation is over. I tend to stop adding ice after about 5 days of fermentation, and let the beer ride out another 2-3 weeks around 70-72F.

Yeah, as stated by others, you have nothing to worry about as far as your cap being off, happened to me once too - with all the CO2 being pushed out of that small of an opening it'd be pretty hard for any koodies to get in.
As far as the high temps, I actually envy you there. I'm doing a Hef now and it's ticking away at 68-70 but I was hoping for 72+ temps for that big banana taste/aroma.
Oh well, either way you're still going to be drinking beer that YOU MADE! Enjoy

After 3 days of no activity/bubbles in the airlock, I transferred my Hef to a secondary fermenter. My gravity reading wasn't as low as I had hoped (OG 1.052, to 1.020. I had a taste and I was pleased to find it was farily light on both banana taste and smell. A lot of the recipes I read for brewing a hefeweizen described transferring the beer to a secondary for a few days before bottling or kegging, however I just read a few blogs that say secondary is a waste of time and a risk to your beer. Instead I should just leave it in the primary for several more days. Made sense, but nothing I can do about it now. I will leave it in the secondary for a few days at 65 degrees, then keg it and let it set for a week at 38 degrees and 10psi. My plan is to draw my first pint on Easter Sunday.